$hubes

9/10

This movie was absolutely awful. LOL So why did I rate it a "9"? Well, you have to be in the mood for an "absolutely awful" movie, and I was. This took me back to those Friday nights in Army barracks when all my buddies were out bar-hopping or clubbing or trying to get laid, and I stayed holed up in the barracks watching USA's "Up All Night" B-movie films and eating Ritz crackers with squirt cheese...and loving it. Listen, you don't watch a movie like this expecting to be absolutely awestruck by the screenplay, the acting, the dialogue, or the cinematography; you watch a movie like this because you're bored, you're eating, you just want something to entertain you for an hour and a half while you eat Ritz crackers with squirt cheese, or corn dogs, or popcorn...just _"Let me disengage my brain and not have to THINK for a little while..."_ and that's exactly what this gives you. There are some incredibly choreographed fight scenes in here - from start to finish - and overall, the whole movie has the vibe of _Bloodsport_ meets _Lionheart_ meets my handwritten self-absorbed novels from when I was a sophomore in high school. The acting is atrocious, the dialogue is diabolical, the story... there isn't one. It's so incredibly lame that you wonder how something like this ever got produced...and yet somehow you sit through the entire thing, do a facepalm at the closing scene, and then laugh when the end credits start rolling because you actually sat through the entire thing. But it's okay because this isn't meant to be taken seriously, or for anything more than what it is: an adrenaline-rush martial-arts tournament movie with a lot of cool fight scenes. The "Sifu" (what we used to call "sensei" in martial arts movies) side-story is laugably bad, but gives the movie just that extra cheese factor (not that it was lacking to begin with) to make it even more laughable. Yes, I gave it a "9" but you'll be doing good to give it a "5", honestly....probably something closer to a "2" or a "3" because it's just a terrible movie. Tonight, however, it just hit the right nerve, and I'm still laughing about it so yes, it hit just the right spot for me and earned a very high rating. I'll probably watch it again some time and still laugh at how bad it is. Don't even THINK about watching this if you're looking for a "good martial arts movie"; this isn't one. But it's highly entertaining, and high-octane action and hilariously bad...and those ought to count for something.